


Everything That Touches Us

by JacknessofHearts



Category: Naruto
Genre: Canon Compliant, Friends With Benefits, Friends to Lovers, Kissing, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-20
Updated: 2020-07-20
Packaged: 2021-03-04 20:56:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 20,032
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25332781
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JacknessofHearts/pseuds/JacknessofHearts
Summary: “I challenge you to kiss me,” he says.It’s out of his mouth before he can really think about it, which is something he only rarely experiences and only when standing in front of Gai. It’s like his brain shortcuts to places he didn’t even know existed before he came into contact with expressive eyebrows, gleaming eyes and a determined grin.A grin that slips slowly off Gai’s face now. His eyes grow huge, as if to make up for it. “What.”*Kakashi and Gai kiss a lot over the years.
Relationships: Hatake Kakashi/Maito Gai | Might Guy
Comments: 67
Kudos: 344





	Everything That Touches Us

**Author's Note:**

> This started out as a 5+1 thing but I'm bad at those, so... this is the end result. It is highly self-indulgent and basically just... rivals kissing a lot. Enjoy!
> 
> The titles of the fic and the parts are from "Love Song" by Rainer Maria Rilke, translated by Stephen Mitchell.
> 
> Thanks to Balthazar for the beta and the support! You are incredible and I'm (not) sorry for dragging you into this mess.

**I.**

**How can I keep my soul in me, so that it doesn’t touch your soul**

The world is dark. Sun and moon and stars have vanished behind clouds or the horizon and the low flicker of the streetlights doesn’t reach into the Hatake compound at the edge of the forest.

The world is dark. Dark, and full of blood, and empty of fathers.

Kakashi tries his best to suppress a shiver, the cold has taken over his body with unprecedented force. Two hours ago, when it was still barely light outside, the village grey in the dusk, in the absence of summer and Sakumo, he had dragged himself into bed. Now, he wishes he had thought of taking the extra blanket from the closet in the hallway, had made tea, or at least thought of a glass of water to set beside his bed.

He hasn’t wished for his father to be alive like this in _months_.

He spends the night drifting in and out of consciousness, calls it _sleeping_ in his mind but his dreams are clouded with coughing fits and a storm rattling at the walls of the house. The rain is ever present, a background noise pushing itself into the foreground, providing sound to the blood-soaked images of Sakumo’s life dripping out of him.

There’s other sounds, too. Sounds that cannot be, because he is alone, is left, forgotten, a son not worth living for.

Steps on floorboards, hushed whispers, a hand on his forehead. He leans into the touch, whines, and then retreats into his pillow.

“He’s really hot, Papa.” A voice, more a shout than a whisper. When Kakashi forces his eyes to open – _intruders! Get up get up get up!_ – he looks up into big, dark eyes under big, dark brows.

“Give him space, son,” another voice says. This one is deeper, a rumble of thunder against the pitter-patter of rain, and a dark shadow looms over Kakashi before someone presses the cool rim of a cup against his dry lips. Kakashi gulps down something lukewarm, his throat hurting but welcoming the fluids all the same.

“Slowly,” says the deep voice, and a hand brushes through his hair. “All will be well.”

Kakashi is not sure if he wants to push the hand away or push into it, so he does nothing until it leaves on its own.

 _They all leave_ , a whisper inside him. _You’re all alone._

But the hand stays, only leaving to give him something to drink, and always returning.

Then.

“Watch him for a while, son, while I…” The hand leaves and another slips into its place, smaller, cooler.

“You need to get better soon,” says a high voice, insistent, close. And then, almost as an afterthought, something soft presses against his forehead. A breath on his skin. “I can’t challenge you like this, Rival.”

**II.**

**How can I raise it high enough**

He says it to drive him away. It’s kind of contradictory, if he thinks about it too long, but everything concerning Gai is somewhat contradictory, so it doesn’t seem like anything out of the ordinary at first.

Gai is loud and happy when everyone around him tells him not to be, when everyone laughs at him – _at him_ , always – he seems to get more determined instead of less, and he’s always there when Kakashi least wants him to be.

“Rival!” Gai exclaims and Kakashi only almost ducks his head and rolls his eyes at the exclamation points that scatter through his speech as often as the words _Youth_ or _Challenge_. Kakashi can hear the capitalization in Gai’s voice like he could hear a senbon clicking against Genma’s teeth or the indignation in Obito’s usual sputtering.

“I Challenge you, Rival! A Match unlike any other, a Test of Endurance and Power, so we can rightfully decide, who…”

Kakashi has learned to filter Gai’s words, drown them out and focus on the important parts. Which means that more often than not, he stares blankly at Gai until he finishes his speech, breathing heavily and with a glint in his eye that would seem manic on anyone else and just looks normal on Gai.

“Huh?” Kakashi asks, after a full minute of Gai huffing and puffing and then only the sound of wind in the canopy of trees above their heads.

“Ah! Rival! So cool!” Gai shouts and staggers a few dramatic steps backwards. Then he gets a grip on himself, points at Kakashi. “But do you Accept the Challenge?”

“Huh?” Kakashi repeats, even though is brain is – helpfully? – providing him with words it has picked up in the last few minutes. Words like _race_ , and _hands_ , and _Forest of Death_ , and Kakashi really just wants to get back to his book and the peace and quiet he had before Gai came bursting through the leaves.

“Come on, Rival!” Gai is determined. He’s always determined and he won’t back down until he had what he came for, Kakashi knows this like he knows the backstreets and shortscuts of the village. “We haven’t had a Challenge in weeks!”

More like days, but Kakashi sure as hell isn’t going to prolong the conversation by bringing _that_ up. Especially since he lost the challenge – holding your breath – rather spectacularly by _sneezing_ into Gai’s face. He’s almost glad that, while Gai is prone to being loud and obnoxious, he’s not one to brag. Even less so if he thinks he won dishonourably.

“How about,” Kakashi begins, and knows immediately that Gai won’t accept rock-paper-scissors today, not the way the lines around his mouth tighten suspiciously.

Gai is the easiest to read with maybe the exception of his father. It’s a miracle he hasn’t been killed yet.

“Can’t we just do this tomorrow?” Sighing, Kakashi lets his book sink into his lap, a thumb marking the page. There’s still some chance he might be left alone.

“I have a mission tomorrow,” Gai says, almost apologetic if not for the way he bounces up and down. Where does he get all that energy? Kakashi is sure he’s seen him running laps around the village until midday today. “This may be our last chance to a challenge for a while, Rival! Don’t you want to seize this Beautiful Opportunity to show your Youthful Spirit to the world?!”

Kakashi wants to do anything but. He’s also sure his plans for a relaxing afternoon before his training session in the evening have been cancelled by this annoying kid in a jumpsuit, grinning at him like handraces through forests full of wild beasts are the best thing since the invention of the bowl cut. And on any other day – or at least on a lot of other days – Kakashi would be inclined to think about accepting. Kind of sounds like fun, in a dangerous and reckless and exciting way.

However.

“Maa, go away, Gai,” he sniffs. “I’m not in the mood for your games.”

It’s probably the wrong thing to say, judging by previous experiences with Gai.

It’s definitely the wrong thing to say, judging by the look on Gai’s face. His whole _being_ seems to crumble into a mess of righteous indignation.

“Games?! You hurt me, Rival! And you hurt yourself! We are supposed to Push each other, to become the Best Possible Version of Ourselves, to…”

“Okay, okay,” Kakashi hurries to say. These tirades can last longer than a challenge in itself and he has neither the nerves nor the time for that. He pulls himself to his feet, weighing his options. He wants this to be fast. He wants this to be painless. He wants this to seem like an actual challenge to Gai.

He looks down at the _Icha Icha_ novel in his hands.

“I challenge you to kiss me,” he says.

It’s out of his mouth before he can really think about it, which is something he only rarely experiences and only when standing in front of Gai. It’s like his brain shortcuts to places he didn’t even know existed before he came into contact with expressive eyebrows, gleaming eyes and a determined grin.

A grin that slips slowly off Gai’s face now. His eyes grow huge, as if to make up for it. “What.”

“Kiss me,” Kakashi repeats, like the dumb, stubborn idiot he is. His heart is racing suddenly, his thoughts are a jumble of _what the fuck are you doing_ and _stop abort abort,_ but he’s never backed out of a challenge he proposed himself. He can’t start now.

“Or are you too chicken?” All he can do, is make it worse, apparently.

 _You could have make him forfeit_ , his brain chides him. _You could have made him back down for once_. But it’s not like Gai to forfeit and it’s not like Kakashi to expect him to.

For a moment, though, it almost looks like it. There’s a frown on Gai’s face – and Kakashi didn’t even know he could frown. Not like this. Not like he expects someone to jump up from behind a tree, yelling “Fool’s on you!” and laughing. Like he expects _Kakashi_ to start laughing.

“That’s… not a real challenge,” he says then. The corners of his mouth are turned downwards, but there’s also a blush climbing out of the collar of his jumpsuit.

“Isn’t it?” Kakashi asks because he hasn’t lost all of his self-preservation instincts, it looks like.

“Who is the winner?”

“Whoever chickens out first.”

“Your mask is an advantage.”

“No, it isn’t.”

Gai considers it. He really is easy to read. Most of the time. At the moment, Kakashi can see him considering, can see the wheels turning behind his forehead, can see the way his jaw clenches and unclenches. Gai’s “Okay” still catches him by surprise.

“Okay?”

“Sure. I won’t back down now, Rival! You are only three points ahead of me!” His words, his grin – however wobbly – are more reassuring than Kakashi allows himself to acknowledge. The frown still sits on Gai’s face like a bad aftertaste but it’s tinged with some of his usual determination.

Maito Gai has never backed down from a challenge!

So, that’s how Hatake Kakashi finds himself face to face with Maito Gai, his _Icha Icha_ novel shoved into his pocket, Gai’s hands on his shoulders, the leaves of the forest rustling in the wind. The village, his training session, everything seems far away right now. Everything but Gai’s face, inching closer and closer.

Kakashi moves, too. He keeps his eyes steadfast, staring into Gai’s; they’re really dark, almost black, the sunlight reflecting in them like… like… He can’t think like this. He’s breathing too fast, his heartbeat is thundering in his ears.

 _Get a grip_ , his brain chastises him.

But that’s easier said than done. He can’t help but think about the people in the books he reads, how passionate their kisses are, especially first ones. This is his first kiss. Is it Gai’s first kiss?

He’s read so much about this, about lips crashing on lips, about mouths devouring mouths, about tongues…

He feels Gai’s breath on his face, even through the mask. His eyes flicker down to Gai’s mouth, his slightly parted lips, shiny and wet with spit. He’s never thought about another person’s spit in his mouth before…

Then his eyes flicker up again and Gai is so close, his eyes so huge…

And then they kiss.

Kakashi feels Gai’s mouth on his, feels the pressure, the warmth, the strange softness that isn’t soft at all. He feels Gai’s lips moving and moves his own, and it’s _weird_ with the mask but it’s also not, it’s also really, really not. He can feel Gai’s _teeth_. He can feel how Gai’s fingers dig into his shoulders. He can…

And then it’s over.

Kakashi blinks. He’s not sure who moved first, he’s not sure if he _wanted_ to move. There’s this urge to touch his lips with his fingertips, but he shoves it down by clenching his hands into fists.

“Who won?” Gai asks, and right. This is a challenge.

“I don’t know,” Kakashi says, truthfully, and still not able to look away from Gai. Still not able to calm his thundering pulse or to stop himself from thinking _so that’s what that’s like_.

At least Gai’s not faring any better, by the looks of it. His chest is rising and falling like he’s run 500 laps around Hokage Tower, like he _needs to catch his breath_. After kissing Kakashi.

He _kissed Kakashi._

_Kakashi kissed…_

“It’s a stupid challenge,” Gai declares. Has his voice always sounded rough like this?

“But it _was_ a challenge,” is all Kakashi has to offer.

**III.**

**Past you, to other things**

Kakashi always knows what to do. He always has a plan, a goal, a mission. He doesn’t like feeling helpless, and he hasn’t felt helpless in a long time. Not like this.

There had been more people at the funeral than Kakashi ever saw smile at Dai without malice or mockery. The Eternal Genin died as a hero and will be remembered as such.

“Even eternal losers win sometimes,” one man says to another. They all wear black, but they don’t look sad.

Kakashi hasn’t felt _anger_ like this in a long time, either. He’s not sure what – or who – he’s angry at. Dai, for sacrificing himself, when he could never even control a shadow clone? Or Sakumo, for throwing everything away like a coward and a traitor, for being weak, when he had been the strongest shinobi of his generation?

Or both. For leaving.

He wants to leave the cemetery, wants to be swept up by the masses, but he stops in his tracks, when he sees a dark figure, impossibly still, sitting by the memorial. There’s something wrong with the world, if Maito Gai looks like… like _this_ , defeated, cold, drained.

There’s something wrong with _Kakashi_ if he considers going up there, but…

He doesn’t have anywhere to be, no one waiting for him, and it hits him that the same can be said for Gai now. So, he stays, at a distance but close enough to see, to feel the shift in Gai’s shoulders, in the way his head hangs, long after everyone else has left.

Kakashi can be patient, even if Obito would protest to that. He waits until darkness looms over the graves, waits until moonlight dips everything in eerie, silvery shadows.

“You have to get home at some point,” he says, when even this patience runs out. When his knees hurt from standing, and his eyes hurt from watching Gai, and his heart clenches.

“Do I?” Gai doesn’t even look up. He always looks up at Kakashi, _always always always_. Then: “Where even his home?”

Perhaps there’s a difference between seeing your father bleed out on the kitchen floor and seeing your father burn to ashes saving your life. But Kakashi doesn’t see why Gai should look like this, like he’s lost. Sakumo’s death has given Kakashi a path, so why can’t Gai see one in Dai’s?

“Get up,” Kakashi snarls and he pulls Gai to his feet. He’s heavier than he’d expected, not the weak little boy who barely got into the Academy anymore. Gai doesn’t fight but he also doesn’t help when Kakashi drags him all the way out to the small shack at the edge of the village that calls itself the Maito residence.

He’s been here before. Dai used to invite him in for dinner after they had completed a challenge like seeing who could catch the most fish with their bare hands out of the river running near the house.

Sometimes Kakashi accepted the invitation. He remembers soft lights and worn furniture, pictures of Gai and his father, of a pretty, petite woman with a kind smile and huge, dark eyes. He remembers the smells of home-cooked food drafting through the air, along with Dai’s loud laugh.

The quiet that greets them is the worst. Kakashi had thought, he’d known silence, spending years alone in a house that was too large even for two people, let alone just him. The difference between the small house with and without Dai in it is staggering.

He stops at the door. Gai beside him has finally decided to stand on his own feet again, apparently, but he presses so close to Kakashi he might as well lean on him.

Kakashi wants Gai to lean on him, he realizes with a distant panic.

Instead of dealing with it, he opens the door and steps into the house. Gai follows, stoic almost, his face so hard it might as well have been carved into Hokage Rock.

“I’m going to move out,” he says, his voice detached and wavering at the same time. “I can rent a place in the village with my salary…”

Kakashi nods. “And until then?”

Gai doesn’t meet his gaze. “I’ll manage.”

It’s strange. Kakashi always wanted Gai to leave him alone, to not be in his way all the time, but now, he craves for Gai to look at him.

With a jolt, Gai starts to move through the tiny, tidy rooms, touching the backs of chairs in the kitchen, the frames of pictures in the hallway and the soft, frayed edges of blankets in the living room. Kakashi follows him, unnerved, unsure what to do.

When has he last followed Gai, instead of the other way around? Has he ever?

After a while, Gai turns around and startles visibly, like he didn’t expect Kakashi to still be there.

“You can go, now, Rival!” he says, with the barest hint of his usual energy. “Thank you for bringing me home!” It sounds wrong, it looks wrong, it leaves Kakashi feeling nauseous, like a kick in his gut.

He doesn’t leave. Gai frowns.

“Leave, Kakashi,” he says.

“No.”

“Why?” Gai’s frown deepens. The lines around his mouth harden.

“He wouldn’t want you to be alone right now.”

When they were kids, when Gai hadn’t yet been accepted into the Academy, when two chūnin had made fun of Dai, had sneered and spit cruel words, Gai had been angry. Kakashi remembers his face, his scrunched up, red face, full of righteous anger, the way his nostrils had flared and he had bared his teeth.

He thought he had seen Gai at his angriest.

“He’s not here,” Gai snarls, not red but white with fury. “We can’t ask him what he wants.” His eyes – finally looking at Kakashi again – are fire, his whole body shakes.

“So what?” The words are out of his mouth before he has thought about it, pushing buttons he’s not sure he should push. “It’s not like anyone cared about him anyway…”

He kind of expects it to happen and it still catches him by surprise, Gai lunging at him, getting on top of him in one incredibly fast jump. Kakashi’s reflexes are fast enough to evade the first hit but the second and third knock into him and throw him off his feet. Falling, he hooks his feet around Gai’s legs and pulls him down with him, uses the momentum to shift them around and pin Gai’s wrists to the floor beneath him.

Gai is strong. Kakashi hadn’t expected that, even though he knows how much he trains, even though he’s sparred with him before. If it’s not just the rage lending him power, Gai has been pulling at least some of his punches.

 _Stupid_ , Kakashi chides himself. He’s supposed to be the genius, he’s supposed to be _paying attention._

He needs all of his strength, his full body weight on top of Gai, to keep pinning him to the floor, and even then Gai keeps writhing, spitting angry screams into his face, trying to kick him off, to get an elbow into Kakashi’s ribs, to head butt him.

Slowly, so slowly, the struggle melts out of him. When he finally stills under Kakashi, he’s crying. Hot, angry tears as well as sad tears, dripping from his face onto the floor, into his hair, silently shaking and sobbing.

Helpless. Kakashi watches Gai, who’s prone to big, ridiculously loud sobbing, falling into pieces with slow, quiet tears. His eyes burn watching it, his _heart_ tearing at the seams.

 _Helpless._ He doesn’t know what to do, so he does what the man who left this house to save his son and never come back would have done, and buries Gai’s face in his arms. It’s awkward, it’s Kakashi lying on top of Gai, it’s Gai crying into Kakashi’s shoulder.

Gai shakes apart under him and so, they shake together.

Eternities pass until the sobbing turns into sniffing, the shaking into shivering. The tears are still running freely, Kakashi realizes when he looks up, but Gai’s breathing has slowed and he’s blinking at Kakashi tiredly.

“He’s dead,” says Gai, his rasping voice barely above a whisper.

“Yeah,” Kakashi says.

“He’s dead,” Gai repeats, and a whine escapes his chest. “I don’t know what to do…”

Kakashi bends down again, presses his lips against Gai’s cheek, tasting salt on his soft skin. “You’ll find out,” he says, holding Gai in his arms, “You’ll be okay.”

**IV.**

**I would like to shelter it**

Gai is faster than him.

The revelation hits Kakashi the same time, well, the same time Gai’s foot hits his head. For a split second, he has to pause to blink away the bright spots dancing before his eyes.

Gai seizes his moment and slams into Kakashi – shoulder first, pushing him off his feet and into the ground. Kakashi grunts at the impact, Gai’s body crashing on top of him forcing the air out of his lungs.

Gai is stronger than him.

It’s almost more annoying being surprised by that than being surpassed by an exhausting little kid who couldn’t even throw a pebble right. He’s known Gai for most of his life; he should have seen this coming, should have realised that those years of a seemingly never-ending training regimen would eventually lead to this.

 _This_ being _this moment_ : Gai on top of him, his body a solid wall of muscle, his right forearm pressing into Kakashi’s throat, his left hand pinning Kakashi’s arms to the ground. They’re both breathing heavily, so at least it wasn’t easy. Kakashi can see it now, though, can see how Gai will one day beat him in a fight just like this one and not even break a sweat.

How could he have missed this?

He’s staring up into Gai’s face, his thick eyebrows almost touching in concentration, his clenched teeth like a grimace on his ever-smiling face. He lets his body go slack, gasps with Gai’s arm still crushing his windpipe, “You win.”

For a moment, nothing happens, like the words don’t reach Gai in his determination. Then, a grin creeps onto his face, slowly but with the force of a landslide.

“I win!” he shouts, and laughs, and laughs, and laughs. He sits up and lets go of Kakashi’s hands and throat.

Kakashi pulls in a deep, shaking breath and rubs his neck, already feeling the oncoming bruise.

“I win,” Gai repeats, more subdued. The smile he turns at Kakashi hurts in his earnestness, in his heartfelt joy.

Sakumo had told him once to watch out, had warned him of exactly this moment. It doesn’t change the fact that Kakashi is unprepared.

“Will you leave now?” His voice is rough, words stumbling out of him in an unexpected rush. He wants to call it _eager_ but it’s really more _desperate_.

“What?” Gai is still kneeling over him, he looks down at Kakashi now, taken aback. “Why would I do that?”

“You did it,” Kakashi says, pretending like his heart is racing only from the fight. “You caught up to me, you reached your goal. I’m not a good opponent anymore, why would you stay?”

Gai’s face does something funny, his smile turning all soft and tender. “For a genius, you can be really stupid sometimes.”

“But it’s true!” Kakashi pushes up onto his elbows, the only movement possible with Gai sitting on his legs. “I’m your rival, right? I’m supposed to push you to be better or whatever, how can I do that now?”

“Because I’m your friend, _genius_.” He says the word as earnestly as only he’s able to but the expression on his face is almost mocking. “Besides, the score’s still 25-23 in your favor.”

 _It is?_ Kakashi thinks about saying, like the annoying asshole he is, as if he hadn’t been paying as much attention to their score as Gai.

“So, you’re staying?” is what comes out of his mouth, though, his brain apparently wanting to challenge Gai to change his mind, to reconsider, to _take this chance and run_.

“Do you need a dictionary?”

“What?” Kakashi is pretty sure at this point that it’s not only his fault he can’t seem to be able to keep up with Gai. The guy’s fucking with him on purpose now, judging by the unnaturally smug grin on his face. It looks stupid and does weird things to Kakashi’s stomach.

“You really need to look up the definition of _eternal_ , Rival,” Gai says and his eyebrows wiggle up and down as he laughs at Kakashi’s frown.

Then, suddenly, he rolls himself off Kakashi and flops down beside him, arms and legs spread wide, his face turned up to look at the sky. His hair sticks to his forehead, making the bowl cut look flat and kind of gross. Drops of sweat roll down his neck, turning the neckline of his jumpsuit dark green, forming wide patches of wet fabric under his arm pits.

Kakashi has to push down the sudden, unexpected urge to _lick Gai’s skin_.

“What a beautiful day!” Gai exclaims, his teeth shining as he grins.

“It’s going to rain soon,” Kakashi says, looking at Gai looking at the sky, _unsure_. Unsure of his uncoordinated, uncontrollable thoughts whirling inside his head, unsure of the jittery feeling in his chest, of the way his fingers want to curl into Gai’s side and never let go.

“Exactly!” Gai tries to punch a fist into the air, but his arm, worn out from fighting Kakashi, only makes it half way before falling down at his side again, landing next to Kakashi’s hand and not moving away again. “The earth needs water just like we do! It’s invigorating, giving it energy, making growth possible! Really fitting, after our fight, if you ask–”

Kakashi leans over and kisses him.

Since Gai is mid-speech, he mostly catches his lower lip over his mask, and his exhausted arms give out from under him, so he has to sink back onto his back pretty fast. At least this way he conveniently doesn’t have to look at Gai’s reaction, this way he can listen to his breathing, to the tense silence only broken by a low, rumbling thunder in the distance. Above them, the sky is tinged a dark grey, covered in ominous thick clouds.

“Huh. We haven’t done _that_ in a while,” Gai says, after a minute or two, oddly nonplussed.

Kakashi turns his head to look at him and is met with a soft, if a bit confused smile.

“I felt like it,” he says, feeling his face heat up and hoping for the mask and the exertion of the fight to cover it up.

“Okay.” Gai shrugs, his smile widening. “If you feel like it again…”

“Okay,” Kakashi echoes. He thinks about it, about pulling down his mask and feeling Gai’s lips against his own, about sucking bruises into his angular jawline, about tasting his sweaty skin.

Rain starts to fall before he can do anything, though, and he’s a bit relieved to have the decision taken out of his hands, to jump up and run home with Gai at his side.

**V.**

**Among remote lost objects**

It’s not that he’s in a bad mood. He’s never in a really _good_ mood anymore, only drifting between _this sucks_ and _this sucks so much more_ and not really knowing how to fix it. Except maybe talking, and that’s out of the question, honestly.

He’s on leave, Hokage’s orders, and Kakashi doesn’t know what to do with all the free time on his hands. Vacations seem so much better when he’s longing for them on his mandatory 24-hour breaks between missions.

Vacations seem so much better when they’re not _forced on him_.

“I’m not even injured!” he complains when Gai turns up on his doorstep, and he almost closes the door in his face.

“We all need time to recuparate from the hardships…,” Gai begins, pushing into Kakashi’s small one-bedroom apartment uninvited.

“No hardships!” Kakashi frowns, closes the door and follows Gai inside. “It went fine! I’m _fine_!”

Gai has stopped in front of his bed, hands on his hips, eyebrows pinched in thought. It’s the first time in weeks Kakashi regrets not having cleaned at least a little bit, if the way Gai’s eyes keep straying over take-out containers and dog hair is supposed to tell him anything.

At least his weapons and armor are clean and packed away in a closet with his ANBU mask, only one kunai is lying on his desk, glinting in the few rays of sunlight coming in through the blinds. So, it could be worse, really.

Gai seems to think the same thing. Kakashi can’t decide if that’s good or bad when Gai flops down unto the floor beside his unmade bed like he owns the place.

“What are you doing?” Kakashi asks, not bothering to hide the irritation in his voice. If Gai hasn’t caught on to that, he shouldn’t even be a ninja in the first place.

“Spending a relaxing day with my Eternal Rival,” Gai answers, grinning up at Kakashi.

“You’re wasting your time.”

“Never!” Gai gasps. “Any day with you is a day well spent!”

It’s oddly touching. Kakashi hates that he thinks that.

“Is this another challenge?”

“No,” Gai says, giving him a thumbs-up. “But we could make it one, if you wish so!”

“I’ll pass,” Kakashi says, finally giving in and sitting down on the floor, leaning against the frame of his bed.

A few minutes pass without either of them talking. It’s the first time in… _ever_ that they’ve been together like this, just sitting, doing nothing. No challenges, no missions, no fighting.

It’s weird but not unusually so.

Kakashi glances at Gai, for the first time realising how still he’s sitting. Unmoving. Not relaxed, not really, but not out for a fight, either. It’s _definitely_ weird, and immensly uncomfortable.

“So,” Kakashi says, slowly, drawing the one syllable out as long as possible. “What have you been up to?”

Maybe he isn’t the only one in need of a vacation, he thinks and watches as something dark and _haunted_ flickers over Gai’s face before being reined in. It gets replaced by a blank grin, strangely devoid of Gai’s usual optimism.

“Nothing as interesting as your _highly classified S-rank mission_ , I’m sure!”

“I’m not going to talk about it.” Kakashi glares.

“You don’t have to, Rival,” Gai says, weird smile still intact. “However…” He pulls something out of his bag, a bottle filled with clear liquid and two small ceramic cups.

“I _have_ dishes, you know,” Kakashi mumbles.

“Clean ones?” Gai throws a look to his sink where glasses are stacked on bowls are stacked on plates, all of them various degrees of needing to soak in dish soap for a few hours.

Kakashi snags one of the cups out of Gai’s hand. “What’s that?” He points his chin in the direction of the bottle. It doesn’t have a label.

“Sake,” Gai says. And adds on: “I brought two.”

“You plan on getting shit-faced?”

“Not really.” He shrugs, avoiding Kakashi’s searching eye by busying his hands with filling their cups. “Just wanted to take the edge off.”

“Off of what?”

Gai is silent, downing his drink in one long gulp, then staring at his empty cup for a moment before filling it again. “I had a mission.”

Kakashi freezes, fights the urge to shove up his headband and use the Sharingan to look Gai over. Instead, he reaches for his drink and takes a sip, lets the alcohol burn on his tongue for moment.

“It went sideways?” he asks, each word measured.

“No,” Gai says. “Everything’s fine.”

 _Obviously not._ But he keeps the thought to himself, even his doubtful snort, because even Hatake Kakashi is not that much of a hypocrite.

“We were in the Forest,” Gai starts, stops and sips at his glass. A smile creeps onto his face, hanging in one corner of his mouth like one of Asuma’s cigarettes, dangerously close to falling. “At the place where my dad died.” He’s gripping tight onto his cup now, knuckles white from the tension.

“Oh,” is everything Kakashi knows to say. It’s not enough but no words could be, so he downs his own drink and then reaches for the bottle, filling both their cups to the brink again. Gai throws a shaky, open-mouthed smile in his general direction without directly looking at him. It’s weird and distant and _not Gai_ , but Kakashi gets it and feels secure in his decision to ignore it like he hasn’t with anything in a while.

For example: “I passed out again.”

Gai snorts into his sake. “I know,” he says as Kakashi frowns, “everyone knows.” He shrugs, his eyes drifting over the disarray in Kakashi’s small apartment. There’s nothing even remotely judgmental in his look but Kakashi still feels the need to defend the chaos to Gai swell up in his chest like the tide being moved by the moon.

He swallows and waits for the feeling to subside.

“You pass out a lot,” Gai says into the silence.

“Never on missions,” Kakashi grits out.

“Of course not!” It’s almost a relief when Gai fixes his eyes on him again instead of the mess on his desk. “You would never compromise a mission that way!”

 _Not like me_ , he doesn’t say, but it hangs between them either way. Opening the Gates always comes with a price. It hasn’t happened in a while, though.

“I always make it past the gate,” Kakashi still defends himself. “I even gave my report this time.”

He shouldn’t feel proud of that, Gai’s eyebrows say, arching up his forehead.

Kakashi stares into his sake. He knows all of this, has listened to superiors, nurses, and even the Hokage tell him exactly this.

But.

“I just…” He takes another gulp of alcohol, lets his head roll back onto his mattress, let’s himself stare at his ceiling for a moment. “I always want to give everything.” The words are drawn out of him, slowly, as if on a string. “For the people, and the village. If I don’t give them everything I have, then what is it even worth.”

 _What am I even worth?_ But those words he keeps buried deep inside, securely stuck where only he can listen to them.

“It’s noble,” Gai says, strangely solemn. He nods and drinks. “It’s what a good soldier does. Always giving 100 percent, never giving up, always Relishing your Youth.”

Kakashi is absolutely sure that Gai has used these exact phrases thousands of times in the last year alone but never _like this._ “Are you _doubting yourself_?” He can’t believe he’s saying this, to Maito Gai of all people. “Are you even the real Gai? I haven’t checked when you came in.”

It’s supposed to be a joke – well, kind of – but Gai doesn’t even miss a beat: “I won against you in a farting challenge and made you swear not to tell anyone because it accidentally made one of the Inuzuka kids pass out in the Forest and you had to carry her home.” It’s probably the only challenge he’s ever been embarrassed by enough to not talk to Kakashi for a week after. The speed with which he admits to it now is unnecessary and heartwarming.

“Yeah, well, you still don’t sound like yourself. Did visiting the site of your dad’s death mess with your head that much?”

“Do you really think your chakra is all you have to give?”

Stalemate.

They’re both not so different after all, Kakashi thinks. _How looks can be deceiving._

With none of them willing to talk about the dark places they’ve found themselves in, the only thing left to do is sit in silence, and drink. The first bottle is gone surprisingly fast, and when Gai takes the second out of his bag, the light filtering through the shades is almost gone, tinging Kakashi’s room in hues of grey and blue.

His eyelids feel so heavy now, drooping shut for longer and longer stretches of time. His thoughts are blessedly silent.

He gets it now, he thinks, the reason why there’s so many bars for shinobi, why they’re always full of people regardless of the time of day.

 _Sake is like a blanket for your mind._ Is he thinking it or thinking out loud?

“That’s kind of poetic,” Gai says. Mumbles, really. He’s leaning beside him against the bed now, mirroring his position and staring at the ceiling. “You should write a book.”

Out loud, then.

“Maa.” Kakashi yawns. For the first time in weeks he’s _just tired_ , not tired because he’s drained all of his chakra. “Too much work.”

“Never,” Gai says seriously. “Not working enough is the only thing keeping us from our goals.” He’s holding his liquor strangely better than Kakashi, his eyes alert, _awake_.

Good. One of them has to be. Kakashi realises with an uncomfortably belated jolt that he’s the easiest target in this drunken haze right now.

Why has he let his guard down like this?

Gai’s side presses into his, warm and stable and _there_.

“When did you stop?” he asks, frowning, and pointing at Gai’s empty cup, forgotten at his side.

“When you took the bottle and told me to watch your plant,” Gai says, simply. “About an hour ago.”

 _Right._ Kakashi remembers that.

“I never did plan to get drunk, I told you.” There’s a smile on Gai’s face now, nothing more than a shadowy dimple in the darkness of the room. Kakashi can still see the spark in his eyes, he’s sure of it.

“Did you want to get me drunk, then?”

“I would never do that!”

“You could’ve challenged me. Would’ve been more honest.”

“More fun, too,” Gai agrees, and then shakes his head. “I wasn’t in the mood, I guess.”

“You see,” Kakashi points at him, “you tell that story about the farting challenge and then you say stuff like that and I wonder how anyone could’ve tortured that out of you.”

This time, Gai rolls with the joke, jabs his elbow into Kakashi’s side in a way that’d be playful coming from anyone else and will probably leave a bruise the way Gai does it.

“Ow,” he complains and pulls a face.

“Sorry,” Gai grins and Kakashi is too drunk and too tired to muster the will to decipher if he means it.

Instead, he just looks at Gai, at the way one shiny front tooth is chipped a bit, and how is nose has been broken and reset badly at least once, and how he’s probably the only shinobi his age – or any age – with more laughter lines than worry lines on his face.

“Hey,” Kakashi drawls.

Gai lifts one impressive eyebrow. “Hey,” he echoes.

“You remember that one _and only_ time you’ve won a fight against me?”

Gai makes a face at the jab but nods. “Yes.”

“Offer still stands?”

“Sure,” he says, without missing a beat, and Kakashi closes the gap between their faces, pushes his mouth against Gai’s.

 _He probably tastes like sake_ , he thinks, and then, _I probably taste like sake._ The need to prove himself right pushes against his ribs, and Kakashi lets it.

“Close your eyes,” he says, quietly, and his heart skips a beat when Gai does without even hesitating. For a long moment, he lets himself stare at Gai shamelessly, and the chipped tooth and the broken nose and the lines on his face are beautiful and perfect and _Gai._

Kakashi pulls his mask down, presses his lips against Gai’s, drinks in the surprised gasp out of Gai’s mouth like the last drop in his cup. And he _does_ taste like sake.

“Kakashi,” Gai whispers, and a shiver rolls down Kakashi’s back at the sound. He grabs at Gai’s thigh with one hand, at his shoulder with the other, feels the muscles under his fingers moving, straining to contain all of Gai’s restless, jittery energy.

“Don’t hold back,” Kakashi says, and it’s like something _unleashes_.

Suddenly, Gai is on top of him, pressing him hard into the frame of his bed, and he almost bites into Kakashi’s mouth, turns the kiss into something open and raw, like a fresh wound, only so much more pleasantly painful. Gai’s warm hands grip Kakashi’s face almost tenderly in comparison, and Kakashi relishes the feel of Gai’s calloused, scarred skin on his. He reaches one hand up to grab thick strands of Gai’s hair, drags his mouth along Gai’s hard jaw, feels tiny pricks of stubble against his lips.

They could go on like this, Kakashi knows, can see it so clearly even in his drunken state. Hungry and on the verge of desperation. He can see himself being lifted up onto the unmade bed, can see the naked tangle of limbs, can see himself arching under Gai, _he can feel it in his bones._

But.

They slow down, turning this wild _thing_ back into something soft and tameable. Kakashi isn’t sure if Gai is just following his lead or if he’s come to the same conclusion.

He presses his lips to Kakashi’s impossibly bare cheek, lingers for a moment, then he draws back just enough for Kakashi to pull his mask back up.

“You’re drunk,” he says, opening his eyes, and it’s so _Gai_ , the way he says it, matter-of-fact, and not at all like it’s a bad thing, like it’s keeping him from having sex. It’d be annoying if it wasn’t so predictable.

“And tired,” Kakashi adds.

“Me too.” Gai leans back further, his legs still bracketing Kakashi’s knees. His face is flushed, his hair standing up in weird directions, and Kakashi still has one hand on his thigh. Maybe he looks a bit embarrassed, his eyes flicking up and down Kakashi’s face, but he’s smiling. “I’d rather do this with a fresh and well-rested mind.”

It’s probably supposed to sound like an admission but it comes out in the same tone as his self-rules. _I won’t fuck Kakashi while under the influence or I won’t jerk off for a month._ Kakashi suppresses a snort at the thought.

“Let’s go to bed,” he says instead, and pushes out from under Gai, stretching his legs for a second before falling into his sheets, already half-way asleep before his head even hits the pillow.

“You could at least take off your headband,” Gai says, as the mattress dips under his weight.

“Ugh,” Kakashi groans, pushing his headband off and under his pillow with uncoordinated gestures.

“I’ll take watch,” Gai says after a moment, resolutely.

“Maa.” Kakashi opens one eye – his own, normal eye – at him, reaching out and pulling at the sleeve of his jumpsuit. “‘s okay, Gai. Just go to sleep.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah.” A heartbeat, warmth blooming under his chest completely separate from the drowsy heat of the sake. “Thanks for offering.”

Gai lies down beside him, not touching Kakashi but his face is still close. He smiles. “You’re welcome. Thank you for listening.”

Kakashi, in his sleepy, drunken mind, is pretty sure he’s talked more than Gai today. He lets it slide, too tired and warm to wonder. There’ll be time to brood over this in the morning.

**VI.**

**In some dark and silent place**

It takes a while after that, after that sake-tasting kiss, after feeling Gai’s tongue in his mouth, after having deep-rooted thoughts torn out of them by alcohol and the safety they feel in each other’s presence.

Because that’s what it is, Kakashi has come to realise, dumb-founded. He feels safe with Gai, like with no one else, with Gai’s steadfast, assuring body guarding his back, always.

It doesn’t change anything, though, this realisation, not like realising Gai had grown into himself when Kakashi wasn’t looking all those years back. It’s still just Gai, Blue Beast of Konoha, and he’s still Kakashi, cold-blooded, friend-killing copy-nin.

And they’re still rivals. The challenges don’t stop – they never do, as far as Gai is concerned, and much to Kakashi’s endless suffering. Still, he kind of enjoys the ramen eating contests, the standing on one hand on top of a lamppost trials, the hunting fish with bare hands challenges, enjoys it almost as much as he enjoys throwing kunai and shuriken at ridiculous, sometimes moving targets, stealthing around Hokage Tower to see who comes closer before the ANBU spot them, or the sparring. Enjoys all of it.

Actually, he’s come to _love_ sparring against Gai. There’s something about the way he grows serious, still with a glint in his eye, and charges at Kakashi. His movements have become almost too fast to track, fluid and unpredictable like a storm he doesn’t see coming until he’s hit with the impact of the cutting wind.

Kakashi relishes the contact of Gai’s body against his, even if it’s like this, throwing him off his feet, leaving bone-deep bruises and a ringing in his ears. He still blocks most of the hits and kicks, the Sharingan tracking Gai’s every move, his chakra a tingle of energy on his skin, electrifying, _alive_. In these moments, he feels as if he had wings, as if he could just take off, break through the clouds and fly straight into the sun.

The ANBU pull him back. There’s a small part in his brain that knows he shouldn’t be going on mission after mission after mission, knows that he needs a break from all the killing and all the secrets more than he needs _air._ The larger, more insistent part of him still wakes up in cold sweat night after night, is still unable to wash Rin’s blood off his hands, sees it dripping between his fingers, hears her whisper in his ears.

He’s not made for ANBU, everyone tells him so, _but what is he made for instead?_

Gai is the most insistent of all of them, trying to pull him out of missions and into the dango shop, his grin like the sun, his challenges a lifeline. Kakashi rarely takes them anymore. Sparring is the exception.

They don’t talk about the kiss for months until one day, after a fight on training ground 45, Kakashi doesn’t push the thought away. He hasn’t seen Gai in weeks, their missions overlapping, Gai coming home just as Kakashi was leaving and vice versa.

Kakashi is so tired and empty and _numb_ , even when he takes off the ANBU mask, he doesn’t feel anything. It almost physically hurts to look at Gai like this, after their fight, tired but still with a grin on his face, with life in his eyes, and Kakashi suddenly, forcefully wants _that_. Whatever it is Gai feels, he wants to feel it, too, wants energy brimming under his fingertips, wants to be excited just to be alive. If only the Sharingan could copy whatever Gai is displaying so openly on his face.

“Come home with me,” Kakashi breathes, and maybe it’s the way he says it or maybe Gai has been expecting this, either way it only takes a moment for his face to light up in understanding, and he nods.

There’s a tension between them on their way to Kakashi’s apartment, like they’re racing each other even though they’re moving through the village at a slower pace than usual, still a bit drained from the fight and exhausted from their hectic mission schedules of the past weeks. All the way home, Kakashi allows himself to imagine what’s coming, lets excitement and anticipation and nervousness seep into his thoughts. He pictures them falling over each other the second they’re inside, thinks of biting kisses, of Gai panting in his ear, of Gai pushing him against a wall, pinning him in place, of Gai’s hands roaming over his body, of Gai’s mouth, of Gai Gai _Gai._

But when Kakashi steps over the threshold, when the door closes behind him, nothing happens. They just stand there, only a few feet away from each other but _apart._ There’s tension, alright, maybe even sexual, but first and foremost there’s Kakashi leaning against the door at his back, not sure what to do for the first time in _years_ , and Gai looking like he’s feeling the same.

“How did we get to this point the last time?” Gai asks, when the silence finally gets too awkward. There’s a faint blush on his cheeks as he smiles crookedly and pushes his hand through his hair. He’s nervous and it’s a relief to see that Kakashi’s not the only one.

“You brought sake,” Kakashi says, almost smiling at the memory, almost feeling something.

“You make it sound as if I had planned to take advantage of your drunken state,” Gai pouts.

“Didn’t you?”

Gai pushes out his chest with indignation but before he can open his mouth, Kakashi brushes the argument aside.

“I know you didn’t.” Of course he does. It’s what’d stopped him to go further. He’s a Good Guy, Maito Gai.

They fall silent again, but it’s easier this time, not as stilted, not as artificial. Kakashi can feel a spark between them, somehow, even if he doesn’t quite know what to do with it yet.

“We’ve kissed on the training ground,” Gai muses, one hand scratching at his chin. It’s a much more _Gai_ -looking gesture than the unsure stance only a minute before.

“I’m not having sex on the training ground,” Kakashi says, and immediately starts thinking about it. _Maybe one day. If this goes over well…_

Then, suddenly, Gai’s face lights up. He points a finger at Kakashi, and _oh no_. “Rival! I challenge you…”

“We’re _not_ making this a challenge,” Kakashi interrupts him, flatly, but he can’t stop the wheels behind Gai’s eyes from turning, can’t stop the grin on his face and the obvious thoughts entering Gai’s mind. He’s just discovered a whole new well of possibilities and if he can’t test Kakashi’s limits now, he sure will in the future.

“You’ve made it into a challenge first, you know,” Gai grins, sheepishly, and Kakashi does know, even as he rolls his eyes.

“Still. Not today.”

“But you still want to do this, right?” He’s asking for permission, Kakashi realises.

“Yeah,” he says, not sure what he’s agreeing to anymore but agreeing nonetheless. This is Gai, _them_ , Gai and Kakashi, and if either of them had any doubts, they wouldn’t do anything.

Gai holds his hand out and Kakashi takes it, lets himself be lead to his bed, lets Gai undress him until he’s only wearing the mask, and he doesn’t know why he thought this could be anything else. He shivers under Gai’s rough hands but they’re still only touching him softly, only guiding where Kakashi wants to go.

Until he drops to his knees, startling a quiet gasp out of Gai. He can’t see Kakashi’s face from this angle, so he pulls his mask down, and presses his nose into Gai’s crotch.

“Take it off,” he murmurs, gripping into the fabric of Gai’s jumpsuit with both hands. “Take it _off_.” He hides his face in Gai’s thigh, bites softly into the muscle just because he can, just to see Gai jump, just because he wants to.

It takes a surprisingly short time to get out of the jumpsuit, Gai only stumbles a bit at the end when his feet get tangled in his haste and he falls backwards onto the bed. Kakashi follows easily, presses his body on top of him, lets him take all the weight because he knows he can, and will, and wants to.

He kisses Gai’s chest, open-mouthed, licks over the shaking muscles in his shoulders, sucks behind his ear. His skin tastes salty, sweaty, and he wonders for a moment if they should have showered beforehand, and then he pushes the thought to the side when he finds that he likes it. Likes the taste, likes that they came here from training, from doing something Gai loves, to _this_.

“Kakashi,” Gai breathes into his ear, and turns his head.

For a split second, Kakashi freezes, still not sure if he wants Gai to see his face.

 _Should’ve thought about that before, huh?_ He chastises himself until he realises that Gai has his eyes closed. The view makes something inside Kakashi uncoil, makes his heart skip into his throat.

Maybe Gai recognizes all of it, all the jumbled thoughts coming loose, maybe he doesn’t, but he puts one large hand at the back of Kakashi’s head and pulls him close until he can lick into his mouth. The other hand roams up and down Kakashi’s side, follows the dips in his spine, over his ribs, lays heavy and warm on his shoulder blades.

He’s got him, all of him, in his arms, his head, his heart. Kakashi almost floats, he feels so much.

Or maybe he doesn’t, maybe this is just what not being empty feels like, maybe this is normal for other people, people who haven’t seen – with their own eyes or others’ – the life of loved ones slipping out of their bodies. It’s almost too much, it’s almost not enough, it’s almost _everything_.

Everything is warm, hot, burning, Gai breathing under him, groaning his name, a rumble in his chest Kakashi feels in his bones.

“Gai,” Kakashi sighs, like a prayer, a spell, a _challenge_.

Gai is like chidori in his hands, restless, reckless, deadly energy, pushing him to the brink and further, further, further. He grabs Kakashi’s hips, bucks up into him, and Kakashi feels the muscles in his legs tensing, pushes against it. They fall into a rhythm, until their rutting turns helpless, until the friction between them is too much and not enough.

Gai pushes his hand between them, Kakashi jerks at the feeling of his knuckles grazing his abdomen, and then jerks again when Gai’s hand wraps around both of them.

He’s not being pushed against a wall, he’s not pinned in place – _another time_ , he thinks, absently – but Gai is still panting in his ear when he’s not pushing his lips against Kakashi’s, there’s still so much of Gai Gai _Gai_.

They shake apart together, Kakashi coming first when Gai’s other hand drifts down his back and onto his ass, grabs him, pulls him in.

Gai doesn’t open his eyes once, not even when he comes, not even after. Kakashi watches him in fascination.

**VII.**

**That doesn’t resonate when your depths resound**

They almost develop a routine.

 _Almost_ , because their lives are much too busy, much too uncoordinated to be anything like that, but they fall into each other regularly, hands roaming, gripping, searching. For what, Kakashi is not sure. Safety, maybe, or trust, or just the other’s heartbeat, sure and steady, when nothing else is.

It’s mission after mission, for both of them, the ANBU mask weighing heavy, nightmares coming and going with frightening irregularity. He can never expect what he’ll see when he closes his eyes and it’s more unnerving than he would have thought a few years ago, when he was too afraid to sleep at all.

But they develop a routine and it looks like this: Kakashi, stumbling through Gai’s window when coming home after a mission. Gai, bursting through Kakashi’s door when he’s home, demanding a challenge, a spar, or just dragging him into his bedroom, where they would have wound up either way.

It’s a routine, or something like it.

“It’s your fuckbuddy,” Genma drawls, his senbon almost slipping out of the corner of his mouth he’s grinning so wide. Kakashi can’t even argue, not when he’s just come home from a mission and right to Gai’s window. He hadn’t expected Gai to have visitors.

“Uhm,” Gai says. He’s blushing and it’d be kind of cute – no, it _definitely is_ – but Kakashi is a bit too stunned himself.

“Aren’t you supposed to be sneaky?” Ebisu asks, brows drawn together.

Kakashi can’t see his eyes through the dark glasses and it’s making him uncommonly nervous. He does what he does best when he’s unsure: acting like a complete dick.

“Aren’t you supposed to be practising for the chūnin exam or something? Is Gai helping you?”

Even through the glasses Kakashi can see Ebisu’s glare. “I passed years ago and you know that!”

Genma’s grin stretches even wider. He plucks his senbon between two fingers. “He’s messing with you, Ebisu.”

“I know that!”

“Then why are you even here?” Some of his annoyance seeks into his voice but he can’t seem to help it. He’s been looking forward to this since he’s passed the border into Fire Country. Maybe even before that.

“They’re still my teammates, Kakashi!” Gai frowns. It doesn’t look good on him, but Kakashi could be projecting. “And their presence in my life is Important to me.”

“Ah, don’t mention it, Gai.” Genma stands up, hunching down a bit in this awkward silence that always follows Gai proclaiming his feelings. Still, he puts a hand on Gai’s shoulder, fingers lingering for a second before he makes his way to the front door.

Ebisu follows, but only after glaring at Kakashi once more, muttering something about “Guess we know who’s More Important,” and maybe they’re not bad people, both of them.

“You don’t have to leave,” Gai says, sighing, and frowning in Kakashi’s direction again. “We could…”

“Duty calls, Gai,” Ebisu says with a self-imposed air of importance no one really buys off of him. Well, Kakashi doesn’t.

“ _Booty_ calls,” Genma says, cackling and closing the door behind him and Ebisu before either Kakashi or Gai have a chance to respond.

Okay, so maybe Kakashi likes him a bit.

~*~

And that’s how they know that everyone _knows_ , and no one seems surprised. Kakashi shouldn’t have expected it, really, since all his friends are shinobi and at least mostly good at what they’re doing, and him and Gai haven’t really made an effort to keep it a secret.

Which leaves the question what _it_ is, exactly.

Nothing has changed since they started having sex. They’re not in a relationship, they don’t go around professing their undying love for each other – well, Kakashi doesn’t. They still fight, and Kakashi is still annoyed, and Gai is still Gai.

So, Genma probably has a point.

“Friends with benefits,” Anko says, unflinchingly, one night when they’re sitting in a bar with Asuma and Kurenai. “Although I’m really not sure if _friends_ is the right term. Or _benefits_ , for that matter. I can’t really picture you two fucking, you know.”

Kakashi chokes on his drink, and Gai goes weirdly still.

“Makes sense to me,” Kurenai says, while Asuma looks like he’d rather be anywhere else right now. Kakashi can relate.

“You don’t have to picture us!” Kakashi exclaims, trying to dry the part of his mask he spit alcohol on with a napkin.

“Don’t be such a prude.” Anko narrows her eyes. “Those books you read are much worse than anything I could say.”

He should have been expecting this but it still catches him off-guard, the way they shamelessly pick apart every part of this… this _thing_ they have going on now. It annoys him to no end, and he starts to avoid them for a while but that’s not so unusual either. His missions always keep him occupied.

Gai he can’t avoid. He doesn’t want to, he likes to let go with him, to burn off residual adrenaline after long, draining missions, to fuck around and forget for a while.

~*~

Then, everything screeches to a sudden halt.

Kakashi’s latest mission in the Land of Snow stretches from one month, planned, into almost three. He loses two people, one in the icy grasp of a snow storm far up in the mountains and one in surprise attack shortly after.

Returning to Konoha on the edge of summer is a shock.

Kakashi has drained his chakra to just short of the point of no return and collapses three hours before they reach the village, his eyes simply sliding shut, his brain lulled into an uncomfortable sense of false security between the rustling of leaves in the wind and the smell of _home_. This should have told him something, he’ll think later, this should have been a warning sign. He’s stopped listening to his body, to his chakra system screaming at him to _stop stop stop_ , to his cracked ribs and broken ankle begging him to rest.

His team carries him home and he wakes up in a hospital bed and with two ANBU in his room to ensure he doesn’t leave it until a doctor says he can. The Hokage knows him too well.

Gai doesn’t visit.

Kakashi realises this after two hours but only starts to worry after two days. Of course, he could be on a mission but when Anko of all people shows up at the hospital, he knows something’s wrong. Horribly, horribly wrong.

He threatens his nurses, doctors, and friends, several times, until they wheel him into Gai’s room. Gai’s room _in the hospital_ , because apparently Kakashi isn’t the only person in the village to do stupidly reckless things that push his body beyond its limits. Logically, he knows this, knows that all the people he knows and cares about even a little bit are soldiers, but for some reason he hadn’t thought of Gai as one of _them_.

Gai is apart from them, always has been, even if he’s changed his position in the last few years. In his childhood, he’d been apart because he couldn’t do the things everyone else did with ease, now because he can do _so much more_.

He opened the Seventh Gate, a nurse tells him. He came in two days before Kakashi, screaming under every touch until he fell asleep.

Kakashi has seen so many people in hospital beds before. They’ve all looked small, vulnerable between white sheets and beeping machines, with needles in their arms and tubes coming out of their noses.

Gai still looks big. Gai _still_ looks like he could beat someone over the head with a tree, his shoulders wide, his chest expanding with every breath, a comfortable constant even in rest.

Only his skin betrays him, red and torn in too many places, and radiating heat like a furnace.

“You can stay for a bit,” the nurse says and rolls the wheelchair he’s been forced into for some stupid reason like broken bones, up to the bed. “But don’t touch him.” And then, as if she sees some of the emotions Kakashi hides before himself in his almost completely covered face, she says quietly, “He’s going to be okay.”

Kakashi almost cries.

~*~

Gai and Kakashi are both on medical leave and they’re supposed to treat it as such, to rest and heal, they’ve had an armada of medical professionals, team mates, and superiors yell at them before they were allowed to set a foot outside the hospital.

They really don’t know them very well, Kakashi supposes, but then, they don’t have the staff to keep them either.

He values the hospital staff, though, and his job, so he takes a day off before he goes out into the forest to train. As expected, he finds Gai in a clearing near the river, already on his 512th push-up.

They spar, that day and the days after, light training – or what they consider light – and not quite willing yet to push the other too much. At the same time, they’re both complaining about the other pulling his punches.

It should be frustrating. It would be, with anyone else, Kakashi finds, but instead it’s exhilarating. Keeping their training a secret makes him think that maybe they should have worked harder to keep their _thing_ a secret, too. He wants to keep Gai to himself, he thinks selfishly, seeking out his attention like a kid craving for affection.

A heatwave settles over Konoha, early summer rolling over the village with a sudden force. Kakashi, who’s spent the last months enveloped in ice and snow, can’t get enough of it, takes to bathing in the sun like a cat, stretched out in the grass, blinking up into the blue, cloudless sky.

Gai on the other hand, who’s spent the last weeks recovering from almost bursting into flames by opening the Gates, recoils from the sun on his healing skin. It’s unusual, to say the least, Gai trying to stay in the shadows and not angling himself so rays of sunshine catch his form in just the right way.

He’s moping about it, too. Kakashi doesn’t remember Gai moping about anything ever but here he is, unhappy frown on his face and sweat gathering in his brows far sooner than usual while he’s going through his katas.

“You’re allowed to take a break, you know,” Kakashi reminds him from his place in the grass where he’s been lying for hours now. The trees’ shadows have moved throughout the day, now covering his whole upper body while still keeping his feet in the sun. He’s taken off his shoes and rolled up his pants, wriggling his toes in the light.

He’s holding _Icha Icha Paradise_ over his head and he doesn’t need to look away from the pages to imagine the disgruntled face Gai pulls with the huff coming from his direction. In his head, the hero in the book suddenly has a bowl cut.

“Not everyone has the luxury of slacking off, Rival,” Gai grunts, dropping into a crouch and jumping up again.

“It’s called _relaxing_ , Gai, you should try it sometime.” He listens to Gai’s laboured breathing for a while. It’s become a constant backtrack in his life, listening to Gai train, push himself, count squats. A melody, soothing.

When he looks up from his book a while later, Gai’s face is red, his jaw clenched in a way that looks almost painful. “You could at least move into the shadow.” Kakashi frowns.

“I like the sun,” Gai says, like it’s a mantra not gritted out between clenched teeth, “I like the heat…”

Kakashi considers him, moving from squats to push-ups. Gai has always been like this, has always pushed himself until he couldn’t move anymore. But now Kakashi has seen him lying in a hospital bed, shrinking back from Kakashi’s touch when he’d been arching into it before.

“Hey, Gai,” he calls, slowly pushing himself up and stretching his limbs.

“Yes?” Gai keeps on counting sit-ups, his eyebrows drawn tightly together.

“Hey, rival.” Kakashi takes care to emphasize the word. This special word, this word he rarely uses, this word he takes care to use as little as possible.

Gai’s head shoots up as if he has a string attached to him, making him sit up straight, then stumble to a stand. “Yes?”

And Kakashi.

Kakashi lets all his penned up energy from sitting in the sun all day, all his energy from _watching Gai sweat_ all day, seep into his grin. “Race you to the river!” And he turns on his heel and starts running into the woods, not looking if Gai follows but sure that he does.

The trees are rushing by him, shadow after shadow, light flittering between leaves like fireworks. Even in the forest, it’s still hot, the air almost stiflingly humid, every scent of wood and earth amplified and pressing into his lungs.

He feels so light.

He reaches the river first, having had a headstart and not being exhausted from training but Gai is close behind, almost crashes into him when he comes to a stop at the river bank.

Gai’s breathing heavily, sweat now freely flowing from every pore. It takes a second, then Gai is grinning. “You win again, Rival!”

“Maa, I could have warned you,” Kakashi says but he still smiles, taking the victory.

“Don’t think I don’t know what you’re doing, though,” Gai says, swiping sweat from his brow with his forearm.

“Wanna swim?” Kakashi nods to the river.

“I don’t think it’s deep enough at the moment.” Gai shrugs. “But getting my feet wet would be quite nice.”

They end up sitting on a flat rock in the riverbed, water only up to their knees and their toes scratching over the stones at the bottom of the river. Kakashi knows the force this river can have, water rising and taking everything in its way with it. In this summer heat, though, with weeks of almost no rain, that river is not much more than a memory, water gurgling peacefully around their legs, almost caressing. It could be colder, too, but it’s still refreshing, still a breath of relief in the sweltering heat.

Most of all, it’s a chance to rest, to stop, swing his legs through the clear water and see Gai finally taking a breath. The steep line between his eyebrows has been there far too long, Kakashi realises when it finally disappears.

“You can’t push yourself like this,” Kakashi says, keeping his eyes firmly on the river, on a few leaves drifting downstream.

“Look who’s talking,” Gai replies, and Kakashi smiles.

“Yeah, I know.” He _does_ know. He’s much better at worrying about other people than about himself. He’s just never had to worry much about Gai before and the urge to _protect_ sits uncomfortably under his skin. An itch he’s not sure how to scratch.

Then Gai sighs. “It’s just so….” He kicks his legs a bit, water splashing up, a few drops hitting Kakashi’s arms. “I’m used to it, you know, to my body not keeping up, to not being able to run that 500th lap. Hasn’t happened in a while, though.”

“You think I like it?” Kakashi lets a snort escape his mouth. “ _Medical leave_. I’m no use like this, sitting around. But we’re also no use burned out.”

“My papa used to say…” For a split second, Gai’s breath catches in his throat. He doesn’t talk about his father that much, although more often than Kakashi. “Rest is also part of training. Muscles tear and they heal stronger but they do need time to heal.” He shakes his head, leans back on his arms and looks up into the sky. “I’ve always understood that, but lately…”

It’s not so easy to rest when it’s the _only thing_ you’re supposed to be doing.

“We really suck at medical leave,” Kakashi says.

Gai laughs, loud and boisterous, the sound startling a few birds at the other side of the river. It’s been a while since he’s heard that laugh, Kakashi realises. His swinging legs brush against Gai’s, cool wet skin against cool wet skin.

There it is again, this light feeling, like gravity has lost its meaning behind his ribs. He pulls Gai in, laughter still on his lips, in his eyes, and kisses him, deep and wet and smiling.

**VIII.**

**Yet, everything that touches us, me and you**

Something changes when Gai meets Rock Lee. It is subtle, at first, but it is also unchallengeably, irrevocably true and Kakashi will later cite his declining mental state in ANBU as the reason he didn’t see it coming. In truth, in moments he has to stop lying to himself, he probably also didn’t want to see it.

Change, that is.

Either way, it sneaks up on him, and one day, he comes home from a short but exhausting mission, ANBU mask still securely covering his face, wanting nothing more than to crawl under Gai’s sheets and back into reality. Wanting nothing more but also not expecting anything less.

Gai is not alone in his apartment.

Kakashi almost realises it too late, one foot already on the window sill. Another chakra signature, dimly smoldering like a tea candle, tiny in comparison to most other chakra users’. It feels inconsequent next to Gai’s but is also masked far less, if at all, in comparison.

Not a threat, then.

Not welcome, either, though, and Kakashi scowls at the glass in front of him, seperating him from Gai much less than the presence of another human being.

For one terrible, terrible second, he thinks about Gai having _company_. Of the sexual kind – or worse, the romantic. It’s this second, and the following moment he needs to reel his emotions back in order, that he realises that whatever it is he and Gai have is not exclusive.

He has no claim to Gai. He knows this, _he knows this_ , it just hadn’t seemed important before, irrelevant because Gai is always there. Gai was and is and will be forever in Kakashi’s life. _Eternal._

Still.

His thoughts are brought to a sudden halt when Gai steps in front of the window, smiling at Kakashi through the glass, lifting his brows expectantly. Kakashi hesitates, just one step away from turning around and heading to his own apartment.

But he’s curious. And – as he will understand only much, _much_ later – indescribably jealous. He slides the mask of his face, hides it in his jacket, and Gai opens the window.

“Rival!” Gai exclaims, as exuberant as always. Then, as he steps away from the window to let Kakashi inside, he turns away and calls into the apartment: “See, Lee, I told you, someone was at the window!”

This tells Kakashi two things: First, either he has let his guard down or Gai has become eerily good at recognizing Kakashi’s chakra signature. And second, the other person in the apartment is called Lee and did probably not sense him at the window.

Lee turns out to be a boy, maybe ten or eleven years old, with thick, black hair bound into a braid at his back, and impressive eyebrows. Impressively _familiar_ eyebrows and for a split second Kakashi shocks himself by thinking _Does Gai have a kid?_

There are enough differences, however, to thankfully disprove Gai’s connection to the kid, together with Gai saying, “Kakashi, may I introduce you to Rock Lee. Lee, this is Hatake Kakashi, my Eternal Rival!”

Gai is smiling and pushing Kakashi further into the room but there is a frantic honesty to it, a nervousness in his gaze Kakashi is unfamiliar with.

He wants them to like each other, Kakashi realises, when the kid gives him a once-over.

“But he came through the window,” Lee says, considering, head tilting to the side. “Doesn’t he know how to use a door?”

Gai laughs, bellowing, suddenly, and Kakashi frowns even as he feels his humanity – always on the back of his mind after taking off the ANBU mask – slowly _drip-drip-drip_ ping back into him at the sound of it.

“You can’t teach an old dog new tricks, Lee,” Gai says and leads Lee back into the kitchen where a tea pot and two cups are sat on the small table. The soft smell of jasmine drifts up from the steaming cups, settling in Kakashi’s bones with its familiarity.

“He doesn’t look that old,” Lee says.

“He’s got an old soul,” says Gai.

Kakashi snorts, thinks, _well, thank you_ , and kicks at Gai’s shins when they’ve all settled at the table. Gai glares but pushes a full teacup in front of him.

~*~

Not everything changes.

Gai still challenges him, and Kakashi accepts most of the time. Gai still asks him to join him, Kurenai and Asuma for lunch or drinks, and Kakashi refuses almost every time.

They still have sex. When one of them comes home from a mission, when they’ve sparred and adrenaline is running high, when they’re between missions and bored. Kakashi gets used to the feel of Gai’s sweat-drenched back when he’s pushing his hands under his flak jacket, gets used to Gai’s competitive grins before he falls to his knees in front of him, gets used to warm, calloused hands dragging lazily over his bare sides.

Then, Kakashi leaves the ANBU. He doesn’t want to say the Hokage _fires him_ but for a moment it feels like it, the demotion a stab through his very being.

Like he wasn’t good enough even at this thing he was seriously good at. Like he’s failed somehow.

No one contradicts him. No one _talks to him_ for days but that could also be a side-effect of not having many people to talk to in general. Everyone seems to agree, though, that this is somehow a good thing.

“Rival,” Gai says and pushes a strand of hair out of Kakashi’s face. Somehow, the gesture seems more intimate than anything they’ve done in the last thirty minutes. “You’ll find new challenges going forward, new tasks to excel at. ANBU is a part of you. Being a teacher can be part of you as well.”

 _Only a part of you_ , Kakashi thinks what Gai is too kind to say, even in his directness. _Only a part, nothing more._

They start taking on teams at the same time. However, where Kakashi makes it his mission to show every last wannabe shinobi how unprepared, how unable they are, Gai blossoms like all that talk about his Springtime of Youth had only been in preparation for this moment.

No, not everything changes. But Gai definitely does.

Kakashi goes looking for him and his team sometimes, finds them on a training ground at the very edge of the village, far enough away to not disturb anyone with splintering training posts, exploding rocks or intense motivational speeches. It’s also surrounded by enough trees for Kakashi to hide in, even if he’s sure Gai notices his arrival immediately, judging by the way his eyes flicker in Kakashi’s direction for a moment before he blocks a hit by the little Hyūga boy on his team.

“Very good, Neji,” Gai praises, “but watch your stance and your hits can be even harder.”

To untrained ears it could sound as if the three kids surrounding Gai are actually keeping him on his toes but Kakashi sees his relaxed jaw and the heavy weights still wrapped around his ankles. He’d be surprised if Gai came away from this fight with more than a few bruises.

Still, the Hyūga kid frowns in concentration. “Yes, sensei.”

 _Sensei._ The term still throws Kakashi off balance but Gai only grins, wearing the word like a badge of honor, letting it define him in a way anything rarely has before.

Rock Lee, who Kakashi has known for about one and a half years now, gets a good kick in later, when Gai is distracted by the serious looking girl on his team raining down shurikens on him. Lee has grown quite a bit, not only physically but also in will, his determination unwavering even as Gai dodges him time and time again. He reminds Kakashi so much of Gai, he has to look away for a while, pulling out a book and not reading a word while he listens to the shouting and clashing of metal on the ground.

They’re so similar, Rock Lee and that little boy Gai once was. That little boy he has outgrown entirely, becoming one of the strongest jōnin Konoha has to offer. Becoming more than he ever dreamed to be.

More than a ninja, more than a rival. A friend. A teacher. An inspiration.

“Don’t get cocky, Neji. Talent only gets you so far.”

“Concentrate, Tenten, don’t let your frustrations get the better of you.”

“Lee, your execution is getting sloppy. You can’t get tired on the battlefield!”

Gai yells corrections as much as praise but only encourages loudly and emotionally once the kids are almost too tired to move. It’s not that different from their challenges, Kakashi realises, and _wow._ Has Gai been training for being a teacher his entire life? _Has he been teaching Kakashi all this time, too?_

“You did wonderful, my beautiful students!” Gai laughs, hands on his hips, grinning down at the children still trying to catch their breaths.

“You’re not even sweating,” Tenten complains, an arm thrown over her face. She’s covered in scratches from attacking Gai out of the cover of a thorn bush.

“Ah, but this has nothing to do with me,” Gai says, sitting down cross-legged in front of them. “What have you learned today?”

“Ugh,” Neji says. Out of the three he seems the least winded, leaning against a miraculously still standing training post expression unchanging. His hair is plastered to his face though, dark strands hanging in disarray.

“Need… to be faster,” Lee breathes. He pushes himself into a sitting position with noticeable difficulty.

“Sure,” Gai agrees, smiling. “However, at the moment you’re not fast enough.”

Lee’s head shoots up, frowning. “I will train much harder, sensei, and if…”

“I am faster than you,” Neji interrupts him. The strain on his words betrays his stoic face, his breathing still laboured. “I could have hit when he had to jump over your kick but you went right in again and were in my way.” He pauses, taking a breath, before his eyes drift to Gai. “Right, sensei?”

“Absolutely. I would have worded it differently but yes.” Gai considers his team, the three kids in various degrees of sore muscles and breathlessness before him. “What else?”

Kakashi watches, listens. He finds himself enraptured in Gai’s clear analysis of the fight, of his students’ abilities, not because of _what_ he’s saying but _how_ he is saying it. His voice is firm, carrying into the tree Kakashi is sitting in, he doesn’t chastise but he doesn’t sugarcoat either, telling them their flaws not without offering advice on how to improve.

After a while, the discussion on the ground becomes white noise to Kakashi. He realises when Gai’s lesson edges into motivational speech territory, his loud enthusiasm a nice backdrop for the scene Kakashi’s reading at the moment. He loses himself in the familiar worlds of _Icha Icha_ and Maito Gai for a while, content in a way he rarely is these days.

When he ends training for the day, the sun already beginning to dip behind the horizon, Tenten and Neji slowly make their way home together. They’re not really a team yet, Kakashi thinks, but he could see them become one, if just for the way they both glance back for a second, seemingly waiting to see if Lee catches up to them.

Lee, however, is kicking a tilting training post with fervour.

“You need to rest, Lee,” Gai says, not unkindly. “That’s part of training, too.”

“I didn’t do my best today, sensei.” Lee frowns, still attacking the post. A shower of wooden splinters rains onto the ground. “You were right, I’m getting sloppy and I’m not paying attention to my surroundings.”

“And you think kicking another training post into the ground will help with that?”

Lee keeps on kicking, his feet aiming high, the wood cracking.

“One is always most alert when well-rested,” Gai reminds him.

Kakashi feels like he’s heard these words before. He’s also pretty sure that Gai himself had to be told to rest many times in his life.

Lee pauses. He stares at the dents in the wood, brows furrowed, a tight unhappy line around his mouth. “Do I deserve to be here, sensei?”

The question seems to catch Gai as much by surprise as Kakashi, judging by the silence he lets hang between them for just a split second too long.

His answer is still immediate, said with absolute conviction: “Of course.”

“It’s just…” There is more hesitation in his words now than there had been in his kicks and hits and eyes earlier during their fight. “I want to make this work, sensei. My ninja way. But maybe…”

“Listen, Lee,” Gay says but Lee soldiers on.

“Maybe there is someone out there who could do more to protect Konoha, to fight, to…”

“Lee!”

“Someone who can do genjutsu and ninjutsu, and I’m taking their place and…”

Gai docks him over the head so hard he stumbles back and crashes into the training post.

Kakashi stares.

“You can’t doubt yourself,” Gai says, voice so serious it sends a chill down Kakashi’s spine. “Will and determination easily fall prey to doubt. Doubting yourself will lead to failure without question.”

Lee’s eyes are huge, shocked but enraptured.

Kakashi knows that face, has known it for some time now. It’s Lee looking at Gai looking at _Lee_ , at the person he is and the person he can be, looking at him like something _precious_ , like someone to be believed in.

Something dawns on Kakashi, in that moment, a thought making room for itself, accompanied by this incredible warmth he sometimes feels around Gai.

“Doubting yourself, Lee,” Gai continues, voice unwavering, even though he probably wants to cry. (This is still Gai.) “That’s also doubting my faith in you. Are you doubting me, Lee?”

“No, sensei!”

Kakashi turns his gaze back to his book as the two people under him hug each other and let their tears flow freely. He only looks up again when he hears Lee leave and Gai calls up to him.

“Are you coming home with me, Rival?”

Kakashi drops out of the tree, watches as Gai picks up his equipment and rights one of the training posts. It doesn’t do much to change the dishevelled look of the training ground.

“You hit him,” Kakashi says, careful to keep his voice level. He’s not judging. He doesn’t know what he’s thinking.

“I didn’t hurt him.” Gai starts walking toward the village, Kakashi falling in step beside him. “Sometimes he thinks too much.”

Kakashi gets that.

“I thought he’s like you,” he says after a while. They step out of the trees and onto one of Konoha’s quieter streets, an alley with only a butcher and a small convenience store, both already closed for the day. There’s a few kids playing with a cat in the last rays of the sun, paying no attention to the two men walking up, more focused on their game.

“He is.” Gai smiles. “He’s a lot like me.”

“He’s more serious,” Kakashi says. He looks up into the clouds, turning the words he’s thinking over and over in his head. Finally, he decides on: “He didn’t have Dai.”

The name doesn’t hurt as much anymore after all these years but Gai’s smile still turns wistful, a sad edge at his mouth Kakashi wishes he could wipe away.

“Ah,” Gai sighs. “No, he didn’t. I can only hope to be as great a teacher as my father was.”

“No.” Kakashi frowns. “You’re a great teacher, Gai.”

Gai’s smile is too surprised for Kakashi’s taste. “That means a lot coming from you.”

At Gai’s apartment, Kakashi wants to skip dinner and Gai has to threaten him with taking _Icha Icha_ away from him until he eats. Kakashi doesn’t believe Gai would or even _could_ go through with his threat but the bickering is nice, feels right. Something slots into place, like a key turning in a lock, when they can be like this. Light and carefree, Gai’s laugh loud and bellowing, Kakashi’s sighs half-pretend and kind of smiling.

Later, they tumble into bed, kissing slowly and still prodding at each other, the taste of chicken and hot sauce on their tongues. Kakashi doesn’t even think about it, it’s so normal, a part of his life like the Sharingan.

“Kakashi,” Gai says when Kakashi is getting ready to leave. It’s late, the night a cozy blanket around them, Gai’s voice behind him almost ghostlike. “You’re going to be a great teacher, too, you know.”

Kakashi slips into his shoes and hums, unwilling to start an argument when he’s still feeling like this.

“I mean it,” Gai goes on unperturbed, knowing what Kakashi is thinking. “There’s so much still in front of you, so much still to do. You’re going to do it all and be great at it, I know it, I can see it even if you can’t.”

Kakashi feels his face heat up, feels warmth pool between his ribs, a steady thrum of something happy and golden in his veins. As he opens the window, he catches his reflection in the dark glass, and almost doesn’t recognise the man looking back at him.

It’s almost the exact same expression he’d seen on Lee earlier.

 _I love him_ , Kakashi realises, with a clarity so sudden and unmistakable, he almost trips over his feet in his haste to get out of the apartment. He slips on the roof and overcompensates with his chakra like he hasn’t since his genin days making roof tiles splintering under him.

 _I love him_ , he thinks again and again and again, a steady stream of thought even in his chaotic, maybe panicked state.

He doesn’t go home, instead trails around the village for hours until the rising sun tinges the sky in deep pink tones like a cut open belly. At that point, he drifts almost mindlessly towards the memorial, kneels between the names and lets himself _feel_.

“I don’t know what happened, sensei,” he whispers to the grave stone. The flowers in front of it are wilting a bit, morning dew glittering in the soft dawn light. “It’s Gai, you know.”

Kakashi presses his face into his knees and _wishes_ , craves for his sensei’s all-knowing eyes, his reassuring smile.

Another realisation hits him: If he wanted advice, if he wanted to confide in someone, to commiserate, he couldn’t go to Gai.

Gai is his best friend.

He’s in love with his best friend.

_Shit._

He muffles a scream with a fist in his mouth, presses his eyes closed and takes in a few heavy breaths through his nose. It’s all he allows himself.

Then, he sits up, eyes on Minato’s name carved into the stone.

So, he can’t talk to Gai. Big deal. He’ll just have to work this out by himself, he’s always worked best alone anyway.

**IX.**

**Takes us together like a violin’s bow**

Team 7 is a mess and Kakashi fits right in with them.

“How do you do it?” he groans, slumping down beside Gai, who’s on his 437th pull-up.

“Rigorous training – 38 – and the Power – 39 – of Youth!”

Conversation with Gai during his training is pointless most of the time, so Kakashi doesn’t try any further until Gai drops from the bar to the ground, his face wet with sweat, and glowing. He wipes his arm across his forehead and takes a swig or two of the bottle standing on the ground.

“You done for now?” Kakashi asks, squinting up at Gai. Sunshine frames Gai’s form like a halo, drops of water and sweat glinting in the light as they make their way down Gai’s throat.

_I love him._

The thought has been persistent for months, now, a steady thrum at the back of his mind, some times louder than others. He’s become almost used to the accompanying panic, too, a tense fear of change that has made a home for itself beside all his other anxieties.

The actual feeling of _being in love with Maito Gai_ has been much harder to deal with.

“I could go for another run,” Gai says but makes no move to put this thought into action. Instead, he crouches down and starts stretching.

“How do you do it?” Kakashi repeats, and clarifies before Gai can go into another tangent on Youth and Spring and the Importance of Will Power: “With your team.”

Gai seems to consider the question, bending his legs and arms, and Kakashi has to remind himself to keep looking at his face. Damp with sweat and stretched like this, the fabric of the jumpsuit doesn’t hide _anything_.

“They’re driving me insane,” he elaborates, mostly so he has something else to concentrate on. “They’re driving _each other_ insane, too, but mostly me, and sooner or later, someone’s going to get really hurt. Again, _probably me_ but Naruto is… well…”

Gai laughs, loud and unashamed, his arms stretching over his head. It makes his chest stand out prominently and Kakashi hates himself.

The laughter dwindles down into a soft chuckle. Which is even worse because it makes Kakashi’s skipping heart turn up the volume of the _I love him_ train of thought.

“What’s so funny?”

“You are.”

“What.” At least the frown on his face gives him a chance of hiding his staring. “Are you laughing at me?”

“I would never!” Gai says, still grinning. _Liar_. “But it’s funny. Seeing you care so much about them.”

“I do not _care…_ ” Now Kakashi is the liar but he’s better at it than Gai.

Of course, Gai knows him too well. It should be frightening – _it is –_ but mostly, it makes Kakashi feel horribly warm and safe and _understood_.

“But you do.” He stops stretching, sits cross-legged in front of Kakashi and cocks his head. He looks like a big, weird-looking dog, the smile on his face infuriatingly smug. “You want them to be safe, don’t you? You want them to be _better_.”

“I want them to stop annoying me so much,” says Kakashi but it’s futile. It always has been with Gai, even when he meant his protests.

“It’s going to be great, Kakashi,” Gai says, his laughter loud and boisterous, emphasizing every word with gusto. “This is the Challenge of our Lifetime! Leading a new generation Into The Light, seeing them fight with the Power of Youth, becoming the best versions of themselves…”

Kakashi lets Gai’s rambling wash over him like white noise, a comforting habit that drones out most of his fears.

 _I love him_ , he thinks, like he always does, always has, always will. It scares him, this thought and all it represents.

“You’ve gotten attached,” Pakkun had said when Kakashi had finally caved and summoned his ninken in the hopes of comfort and advice. He hadn’t really gotten either but Pakkun had at least sighed, putting a wrinkly paw on his leg.

“There, there,” he had said. And then: “At least he’s capable. And you’re already screwing.”

Granted, the tail end of a panic attack hadn’t been the best moment to talk to the ninken about feelings. Kakashi should have known better.

Their routine has slowed down considerably which isn’t only Kakashi’s fault. Their teams are keeping them busy, especially now that he’s decided to actually keep one. If it happens to give him some space away from Gai, some missions to keep his mind occupied for a while, well. He’s not complaining.

However, he can’t stay away completely. He drifts around Gai as if bound by gravity, sneaking in and out of his apartment in the middle of the night, looking for grounding hands and the warmth of Gai’s sheets around him.

 _I love him_ , he thinks. It’s difficult not to think it all the time, now, with Gai’s face bright with sunlight and joy, with his sweaty hair sticking up in weird places, with his words filling the air unapologetically confident.

He seems so different from that kid back at the Academy, declaring Kakashi his rival and not able to run five laps around the building, let alone 500 around the village. He had been overeager and stubborn back then, easily offended and carefree verging on careless. He’s still all of those things, at times, but subdued, as if he’s grown into his eccentricities like he’s grown into his body.

But maybe, it isn’t Gai who has changed. Maybe Kakashi has changed the way he looks at him. Sometimes he sees Dai in this man in front of him, in his never faltering will, in his gentleness and loyalty. But then, Gai is his own person more than anything.

Gai is all of these things and _more_.

And Kakashi has loved him for longer than he can remember. It scares the living hell out of him.

 _I love him_ , he thinks and can’t say it but he has to say something.

“Your dad would be really proud, you know that?” he decides on, which is probably almost as heavy.

Gai halts mid-sentence, staring at him, blinking. Two seconds pass, then three, then four, then he pushes forward and his mouth against Kakashi’s mask, his hand clasping around the back of Kakashi’s neck strong enough to bruise before he lets go.

“Thank you,” Gai says, his eyes big and bright and wondering. He squints a bit, as if looking for something, but before Kakashi can comment or avert his gaze, he’s already leaning back again before getting up.

“Going home?” Kakashi asks, lips still tingling even under the mask.

“Nah.” Gai stretches his arms over his head. “Think, I’m going on that run first. You want to join me?”

“Absolutely not.”

“Ah, so _cool_!” Gai’s grin is easy and blinding.

“Meet you at your place later?” Kakashi is glad that his mask is hiding the blush creeping onto his face but he can’t keep the smile out of his visible eye. His eyes follow Gai as he waves and starts to run, a bright green bundle of energy.

 _I love him_ , he thinks and is still scared to say it out loud. But he can see himself saying it. One day.

**X.**

**Which draws one voice out of two separate strings**

Madara and Kaguya shred the world into pieces, and Kakashi fights until there is no fight left in him and gets up again after that regardless, kunai in his hand, Sharingan swirling, heart beating.

Then he looks at Gai, at the determination in his eyes, and knows: _This is going to hurt._ So, he tries to push his feelings down, tries to lock up his words in a box under every _I’m sorry_ he still owes Obito, under every promise he’s made to Rin, under every _I wasn’t enough_ for Minato-sensei.

One last time he thinks _I love this man_ , before he stills his shaking hands, the desperation in his heart. Then he watches as Maito Gai burns.

Kakashi has seen Gai fight, has seen Gai open seven Gates before, has seen him fall down and get up time and time again. He’s seen Gai, the warrior, Blue Beast of Konoha, but this, now, he never could have seen coming.

Gai is scary. And it’s not just the cloud of blood evaporating around his sun-hot body, drenching his hair like red paint. It’s not just the way his skin rips open, paper-like, his muscles underneath glowing like magma in the dark, or how his chakra bursts out of his body, a dragon ready to become fire.

It’s his eyes, white and wide and focused, terrifying in their intensity, in their intent to kill, maim, destroy, _protect_.

It’s his will, his energy, his neverending belief, shining through the tears in his skin and the breaking of his bones and the roar of his voice. Morning Peacock, Daytime Tiger, Evening Elephant, _Night Gai._

Kakashi wants to look away but he cannot. If this is the last time he sees Gai alive _and kicking_ , he will look, will savour every second they’re still breathing the same air, will watch as his best friend, his love, his rival makes his mark on history.

It’s strangely, terrifyingly beautiful.

When Gai falls, all of his glaring light vanishing like a dying star in one last grand explosion, Kakashi feels blinded.

When Naruto does _whatever he does_ to stop the inevitable end of opening the Gate of Death, when Madara is defeated and the war is won, Kakashi falls to his knees at Gai’s side and breaks. The tears shake him to his core, his body crumbling, his pain so visceral, he feels it tearing him apart. He can’t say if it’s relief or grief, bone-deep sadness or undying love, it just is. Pain has always been part of Kakashi’s life but this time he lets himself feel it.

Gai is still glowing, cracks across his skin like earth broken up by a volcano, his skin emanating heat so great Kakashi does not dare touch it. He just watches it dim, slowly, and tries not to let his tears drop onto Gai’s body.

Kakashi is not there when Gai wakes up in the hospital, the first time, and no one really tells him what it was like but he listens to the whispers in the hallways the next day, recounting the screams echoing through the building. One nurse, distraught and shaking his head, keeps his eyes firmly on the charts in front of him as he tells another of the body, twisting and turning so much all his wounds ripped open again.

“I know,” the nurse says, so quietly Kakashi has to strain to listen in, to not miss a word, “that burn victims are always the worst. But he’s burning from the inside out. I’ve never seen anything like it, sometimes I think it’d be better if…”

Kakashi stops listening in after that. He’s angry and afraid and it’s not a good combination, so he stays away from the hospital staff for a while.

He can’t seem to stay away from Gai.

No one tells him to go home when he stays at his bedside for five days, not even Tsunade who rushes in checking Gai’s vitals and pauses at Kakashi’s shoulder.

“He’s not going to wake up for a while,” she says, not bothering to lower her voice.

“I know how a coma works,” Kakashi snaps. He just can’t help it, his nerves worn thin and sharp like blades.

Tsunade rolls her eyes and flicks a finger at his ear. “I’m trying to comfort you here, brat.” She sighs, then, lowering her hand onto his shoulder, a soft weight to anchor him. “I meant, he’s not going to wake up soon. You should go home and sleep. Take a shower.”

Kakashi raises his head to look at her. “I don’t smell.”

“I don’t care,” she says, lying through her teeth and not giving a shit about it. “I’ve got a hospital full of people injured in a war, I have better things to do. That said…” She tightens her grip on Kakashi’s shoulder. “Don’t forget that you’ve been in this war, too. Take care of yourself, for once.”

With that, she turns around and she’s almost at the door when the words Kakashi’s held on to so tightly for all these years come bursting out of him. “I love him.”

His heart beats loudly in his ears and he almost doesn’t notice her coming back to his side until she’s right behind him.

“Oh, you stupid boy,” Tsunade sighs, softly, and wipes a few tears from his face with her thumb.

**XI.**

**Oh, sweetest song**

After the war, all Kakashi wants is to curl up against Gai’s side and sleep. He doesn’t get to do either. Doesn’t get to sleep because there’s rebuilding to do and ninjas to command and papers to sign. _So many papers._ He can almost hear Tsunade’s cackling while Shizune tells him his daily schedule.

“I feel like there should be more hours in the day for this,” Kakashi says, frowning, the first time.

“It’s perfectly doable,” Shizune answers, and her eyes say, _And if you don’t do it, I’ll rip you a new one._ She smiles.

Kakashi sinks a bit further into his chair. “When am I supposed to sleep?”

“It’s perfectly doable,” Shizune repeats.

At least he has Shikamaru to commiserate with.

“There _should_ be more hours in the day,” Kakashi says after a week. He’s never complained about hard work but this is ridiculous. There’s not enough time, not enough workers, not enough fucking sake in this world. “Can’t I just… _rule_ that there should be 30-hour days? I _am_ the Hokage!”

Shikamaru lifts one eyebrow at him. “You are, Kakashi-sama.”

“Just Kakashi, please,” Kakashi groans.

“But you just said, _you’re_ the Hokage…” There’s a grin in his voice, even if he’s not moving a muscle in his face. Kakashi wants to throw him and all of his generation through a window. Stupid children, stupid war heroes, stupid Naruto who’ll not be ready to take the hat for years.

“I asked Shizune to move around your schedule a bit,” Shikamaru says, three weeks into the job.

Kakashi almost falls off his chair. “And you’re still alive?”

“There’s good news and bad news,” Shikamaru warns. He’s slouching a bit, hands in his pockets. It’s the most relaxed he’s looked in days, his posture almost rigidly serious, head held high, eyes awake. Leadership suits him, Kakashi’s thought more than once, even when he sometimes misses the lazy stare and the drawling voice. Leadership suits Shikamaru like it suited his father, and Kakashi wishes he didn’t know that.

“Bad news first,” he sighs.

“I had to move the meeting with the clan elders to Thursday – they were not happy about it – and you’ll have to make a decision about Sasuke’s… situation before then. Probably means another night shift, too.”

The clan elders, and Sasuke.

Which means…

“You told Naruto yet?”

“He’s waiting outside.”

Of course he is. Something warm unfurls in Kakashi’s chest, something close to relief, to happiness. Yes, he wants to throw Naruto through a window at least twice a day but he’s also so _so_ glad that his team is alive, is well, is _here_.

He thinks, _Everyone I love is here_ , even as he sighs. “And what could be so good that you had to make my schedule worse?”

“You’re free next Friday,” Shikamaru says, and he doesn’t smile but his eyes are soft as he looks at Kakashi, waiting.

Next Friday.

It takes a second before Kakashi has processed the information, the date, the consequences, and then. “Oh.” Because this is the other thing he hasn’t been able to do since becoming Hokage, since the end of the war. “Has it been three months already?”

Curling up against Gai’s side has been out of the question, not only because of Kakashi’s ridiculous schedule but because of every medical professional, Tsunade and Sakura’s urgent warnings against touching Gai. So, Kakashi has refrained, has sat at Gai’s bedside on uncomfortable plastic chairs, talking until his throat was sore, or in silence. He’s tried to visit every day but since taking the hat, his visits have become ever shorter, minutes squeezed in between one meeting and the next, sometimes just climbing through the hospital window at night, feeling the judgmental eye rolls of his ANBU guards at his back. Gai sleeps most of the time, day or night, has only recently begun to stay up more, but Kakashi doesn’t mind watching him sleep, even if he misses his voice, his grin, his posing, and the glint in his eyes.

Gai is alive. It’s enough.

Friday is the day Gai’s being released from the hospital. It’s been three months.

Friday is the day he gets to take Gai _home_.

He doesn’t tell him, though, afraid of getting Gai’s – and his own – hopes up when his schedule has been unpredictable at best. So, he’s almost surprised himself when he can walk into the hospital on Friday and see Lee and Tenten getting Gai ready to leave.

“Rival!” Of course he spots Kakashi first. “You came!”

“Wouldn’t miss this,” Kakashi says, leaning against the doorframe of Gai’s room. It’s strange to see it so empty again, all white walls when for the last three months it had been decked with pictures, balloons, banners, flowers, and get-well-cards. There are two boxes on the floor at the foot of the bed, and a vase with sunflowers next to a travel bag.

Seeing three months packed up in boxes has never felt so good.

“Kakashi-sama!” Lee bows. He’s gripping the handles of Gai’s empty wheelchair. Gai is sitting on the bed, strangely subdued in colour without his green jumpsuit and orange leg warmers. The black t-shirt he’s wearing stretches across his muscular chest and he still looks lost in it.

Kakashi’s eyes drift over Gai’s bare arms, over the pink net of scars, and he has to look away again.

“Gai-sensei won’t let me escort him home!” Lee complains, a frown on his face. “Maybe you can talk some sense into him.”

“Lee!” Gai pouts. “I am perfectly able to wheel myself to my apartment.”

Judging by the look on his face, the tone of Lee’s voice, and the exasperated way Tenten chimes in “You’re really not!”, they’ve been having this discussion for a while.

Kakashi lets them bicker for a while, studying Gai’s face like he has for the past weeks, months, years. He knows it better than is own, he realizes, and he’s still coming to terms with seeing it _like this_.

Gai has always been so open, letting every emotion show up easily in his eyes, his laughter, his smile. He’s different now, tense in his effort to not be read as easily, strained with pain and the exertion to not let it show up on his face.

Kakashi can still read him like a book, suspects the kids can as well, but there’s also something else there, something deeper he can’t quite decipher yet, something that makes him worry. It’s almost as bad as looking at Gai’s scars.

“I’ve got it, Lee, Tenten,” Kakashi interrupts their argument. “You take the boxes, okay?”

“And what makes you think, I’m letting you cart me away?” Gai narrows his eyes at him.

Kakashi shrugs. “Well, I am your Hokage, first of all,” he says.

 _And I’m your friend and I’m asking you to let me do this,_ he thinks.

At the word _Hokage_ , Tenten and Lee pick up the boxes, the vase and the travel bag, scuttling off as if Kakashi had given them an order. Gai protests but Lee just grins at him from the door, yelling “See you later, sensei!”, while Tenten presses a quick kiss into his hair on the way out, uncommonly gentle, before skipping after Lee.

Kakashi looks after them, listens to their loud, hospital-inappropriate voices in the hallway until they disappear out of earshot.

“This is your fault,” Gai exclaims, the angry, tight tone in his voice enhanced through the pain he’s finally letting show.

Kakashi – not sure what he’s exactly at fault for but taking the blame anyway – ignores him. “You scared them, you know.”

It takes all the fight out of Gai at once. He deflates, looks at Kakashi with soft, guilty, grieving eyes.

Kakashi hurts for him. And he’s _still_ so immensely, incredibly glad he’s able to look at him at all.

It only takes a moment, though, an almost-but-not-quite defeated sigh from Gai, then he’s lifting himself from the bed into the wheelchair. Kakashi can see the strain it takes, can hear the suppressed groan Gai swallows down, but he doesn’t comment on it, doesn’t rush to help him, doesn’t do anything but wait for Gai to catch his breath again.

“They’re already grieving enough,” Gai grits out, once he’s seated. “I don’t want them to worry about me as well.”

“You can’t stop anyone from worrying,” Kakashi says. “Just let them. It’s better than grieving you, too.”

 _I almost lost you_ , he doesn’t say but is sure Gai hears just the same. _I love you and I almost lost you._

Sakura comes in before Gai can reply, before Kakashi can voice his thoughts out loud, and she brings with her an entire medicine cabinet, detailed instructions how to use them, and a schedule for Gai’s physiotherapy including a warning not to overdo it.

“And since you’re going to overdo it anyway,” she says, and hands over several other pill bottles.

Kakashi loves her a lot.

“I have to warn you, though, even if I’m sure you know this but I also know you all are useless in following medical instructions.” Sakura throws a glance in Kakashi’s direction at that. _Rude._ “Even a little too much will cost you. If you pass out again, it could throw you back weeks in your recovery.”

_Again?_

Kakashi frowns. Gai keeps his eyes steadily, stubbornly on Sakura.

“I know you don’t want to hear this, and I _get it_. But this is not something you’ll come back from. You’re a hard worker, Gai-san, and I respect that. But hard work won’t do you any good here, it’ll only hurt you. You need to be patient.”

Kakashi would be shocked at her serious tone, her bluntness, if he wasn’t sure she’d never say it like this without reason. If he wasn’t sure she had tried saying it more softly, more patiently, before reverting to this.

He knows Gai better than anyone after all.

However, he’s still not quite convinced that her speech will have any lasting effect on Gai. For now, he lets Kakashi grip the wheelchair handles, though, and allows him to push him home. It’s something.

~*~

_Home_ is not Gai’s apartment on the sixth floor of a building close to the Academy, inhabited mostly by other shinobi. Lee and Tenten have moved Gai’s belongings into a wheelchair-accessible apartment in the vicinity of the Hokage building. Kakashi had been very pleased with that, Gai had protested at length and only given in when Tsunade had assured him she would rather keep him in the hospital for three years than let him climb six flights of stairs.

He still pulls a face for a second on arrival but then does a remarkable job of acting very excited when Lee and Tenten show him around, only faltering momentarily when he sees the white plastic seat in the shower. But the doorways are wide, and there are no hang-on cupboards, and the kids have done an excellent job at moving all of Gai’s furniture and making the new place look almost exactly like the old one.

Kakashi can already picture Gai being stubborn and hard-headed, walking around when he shouldn’t and pushing too far, but it’s not something he expects to be able to change and he’s glad that at least Gai will always be able to get into his apartment.

It takes a while for Tenten and Lee to leave. They’re worrying, trying to stretch out time always finding new small tasks to do. Lee is more obvious, more eager to please, sticking to his sensei’s side most of the time, while Tenten drinks cup after cup of coffee, clearly unwilling to leave but not straight out saying so.

They’re good people, Kakashi thinks, when they’re finally closing the front door behind them. He watches from a window as they step into the busy street, Tenten leaning into Lee’s side for just a moment. The gap between them is visible even in their closeness, a Neji-sized hole made even more obvious in the way they huddle together.

Kakashi takes a step back from the window, not wanting to intrude on their grief. He turns to Gai instead, who’s looking strangely forlorn sitting at his kitchen table, hands clutching a cup of tea.

When he feels Kakashi’s eyes on him, he raises his head. Suddenly, without his students in the room, without doctors and nurses to impress with his recovery, he looks dead tired.

“You don’t have to stay,” he says as Kakashi is joining him at the table.

“I’m free all day,” Kakashi replies easily and is glad that it’s not a lie, thank Gods for Shikamaru and Shizune.

“I am perfectly capable of being alone in this wonderful new apartment!” Gai stresses. There’s a trace of anger in his tired a voice, a trace of his usual Spirit of Youth.

“I want to stay.” Kakashi smiles. He reaches out, hesitantly, and lays one hand on top of Gai’s.

Gai breathes in sharply, tensing, but he doesn’t pull back. They haven’t touched at all in the last three months, a completely new challenge of restraint for both of them.

“Does it hurt?” Kakashi asks, looking at their hands, marvelling at Gai’s scarred, warm skin under his fingertips.

“Why are you still here?” Gai asks back, quietly, voice rough and tired and close to saying _Yes_ , Kakashi thinks, even if he’s not sure to which question.

“I want to be,” Kakashi repeats, tightens his hold just a bit.

Gai hisses. And still doesn’t pull back.

“I can’t be your rival anymore.”

At that, Kakashi looks up, up at this beautiful, beautiful face drawn into a deep frown. _I love this man_ , Kakashi thinks, and thinks it again and again just because he can, just because he can still look at him and think _love_ instead of _loved_.

“Do you need a dictionary?” He remembers a conversation from a long time ago, remembers the fear in that moment of losing Gai, of being surpassed and forgotten.

A corner of Gai’s mouth twitches, clearly remembering as well.

“Because you really need to look up the definition for _eternal_ , Rival,” Kakashi says and watches in amazement how Gai’s lips stretch into a smile at his words, how it shines in his eyes as well as he looks down at their joined hands.

 _I love this man_.

He wants to say it, too, wants to spill all of his secrets into Gai’s lap, wants to lay them on these shoulders that have always been stronger than Kakashi’s. The words still get stuck in his throat somehow, fluttering apart on his tongue soundlessly.

Why is he still scared when the scariest thing he could have imagined has already happened?

“I want to…,” he starts instead, but even this sentence he can’t seem to finish.

What does he want when he wants _everything_?

Gai looks up. There’s still a weary tiredness in the lines around his eyes, bone-deep and uncomfortable, but now it lends a realness to the tilt of his head, to one hand gripping onto Kakashi tightly.

“I know,” Gai says, his voice deep and unfaltering, so sure of himself, of Kakashi, of _them_.

“What?” Kakashi asks, means _What do you know_ , but says, “What do you want?”

Instead of answering, Gai lifts his chin, as if daring Kakashi to defy him. “Take me to bed.”

Or, that’s probably an answer, too.

Gai’s body is a map of his struggles, every scar criss-crossing over his body evidence of what he has endured and accomplished. The Eighth Gate has torn his skin apart and now it resembles a broken vase, the porcelain pieces mended with molten gold, the lines only making him more beautiful, more precious, more of a masterpiece. Kakashi finds himself tracing them with his eyes, his fingers, his tongue, like roads to his heart finally finally _finally_ being clear in front of him.

They lie together, exploring like it’s their first time – _which it is, in a way_ – and touching like they’ve known each other for a lifetime – _which they have_. Gai is painfully sensitive, shuddering under Kakashi’s hands but Kakashi is not much better himself. Gai’s breath grazes his ear, his voice is a deep rumble in his chest, earnest and joyful and living. Kakashi can’t get enough.

“Come for me,” Gai says, his eyes boring into Kakashi’s, holding him. “Give me everything.”

So he does.

They lie together, looking and living and loving, and everything just falls into place, easily, like this.

“I’ve loved you for so long,” Kakashi says, admits. And it’s not choked out but measured, considering the weight of every word, and wondering at the truth in them.

Gai grins at him, openly, that trace of pain never quite disappearing but all the more honest with it. “I know. I’ve been waiting for you to catch up.”

“I needed time,” Kakashi says. “Sorry it took me so long.”

“But not too long, Rival.”

Gai’s grip on him fastens, almost painfully so, but Kakashi relishes it, this pain you can only feel when you’re still alive to feel it.

**Author's Note:**

> English is not my native language, so if you stumbled upon any terribly obvious Germanisms, feel free to tell me!  
> Comments are much appreciated.
> 
> Come talk to me on tumblr [@mondfahrt](http://mondfahrt.tumblr.com)


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